December 12, 2018

Digging in deep, really deep, to compile year-end lists is both exhilarating and exhausting, illuminating and intimidating. Crucial challenge: Recall the impact of things that happened many months ago, then balance against impact of things that just happened.

If anyone's curious, I'll be posting my year-end lists for @thelogjournal on Dec. 26 (conflict-of-interest citations), 27 (live events), and 28 (recordings). None of which are meant to represent "BEST" of anything, just what impacted me most over the last 12 months.

Last thing I'll say is that I've rarely found it so easy to select my favorite albums of the year – one for so-called "classical music" and one for "everything else." My choices felt unusually clear this year, and haven't wavered.

One more observation, on further reflection: Hardest thing about year-end process might be accepting that you sometimes are utterly unmoved by certain things lauded seemingly universally by friends, peers, colleagues. It's happened a few times during my process… and it's fine.

An obvious point that still bears repeating: There is NO SUCH THING as an objective assessment of the year's best anything—even in some conglomerated poll selected by committee and scienced to the nth degree.

October 23, 2018

My contributions to the Goings On About Town section in the October 29, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, covering the dates October 24-30. The bug that lately has prevented venues from appearing with listings online has been repaired, but I'll provide them again here anyway. Why not? (Click on any listing to enlarge it.)